Only after years spent employed at various other ventures-including stints as a theater director in Chicago and a Web entrepreneur-did Marc Rosenbush finally move to California to pursue his dream of making movies.

By 2006 his first feature, Zen Noir, was complete and ready for release. But, despite numerous festival credits and a healthy following, the movie didn't receive any distribution offers. So Rosenbush turned to his background in Internet marketing and began self-distributing the film online.

The moviemaker describes himself as coming from a "starving artist's mentality," where he was "embarrassed to be too aggressive a marketer." But Rosenbush realized that "if I spent two years making a film that I care about and I honestly believe will be of value to people, then I'm doing a disservice to myself and the audience by not using any of my power to get it into their hands." Sound familiar?

Two years after its initial release, Zen Noir is still bringing in money for Rosenbush-with little continued effort on his part. This has allowed him to concentrate on his sophomore directorial effort and his online seminar, Internet Marketing for Filmmakers, a paid course that lays out all the steps needed to find the same distribution success Rosenbush himself has found. In October 2008 he will be speaking at a two-day live event at UCLA. Reviewing the same techniques he touts in his online seminar, Rosenbush will even be inviting members of the audience onstage to help develop personalized marketing plans for their movies.

"I hear from people who get responses at film festivals like, 'Wow, 10 years ago this would have gone to Sundance in a second.' Or, 'Fifteen years ago I would've bought this film for my distribution company in a second.' Now there are hundreds of those kinds of films at festivals."

The bottom line? If you don't have a lot of money and need to do it yourself, you can. Here, Rosenbush outlines some of the basic techniques that have helped make Zen Noir an indie success story.